In large institutional settings such as hospitals, the dispensing and delivery of drugs has become a time consuming process. In particular, sterile items, controlled medications, biological samples, and the like need to be prepared and transported in a secure environment while ensuring the safety of patients and hospital workers.
Transporting objects via pneumatic tubes is known to the art. Pneumatic delivery systems are used extensively for the rapid and efficient transportation of a wide variety of articles. These delivery systems are used in a number of business operations, including, but not limited to, banks, hospitals, office buildings, industrial plants, and transportation terminals.
To send a payload in a carrier, an object is placed within a carrier which is then transported within enclosed pneumatic tubing by air under either positive or negative pressure to a desired destination. The interior of the closed tube and the outer dimension of the carrier form a seal so that the carrier can be propelled between the destinations by a vacuum or positive air pressure.
One specific area of commerce which currently uses the pneumatic tube for transporting materials is the hospital or biomedical research/manufacturing industry. Pneumatic tube delivery systems have proven to be particularly useful for transporting blood samples, medicines, intravenous bags, viral samples or other biological or chemical matter within hospitals or laboratories. Some of the payloads transported may be highly addictive drugs (i.e. morphine) which need to be tightly controlled.
Thus, there is clearly a need for a system providing a secure pneumatic tube carrier delivery. A need exists for a system providing tracking of carriers in a pneumatic tube system to ensure the secure delivery of carrier contents to authorized end users. Furthermore, there is a need for an auditable trail indicating the chain of custody of carrier contents.
According to the present principles there is provided a pneumatic tube carrier tracking system for tracking carriers in a pneumatic tube system comprising a pneumatic tube system, a connecting diverter with blower, and storage piping with diverters, sending and receiving stations, a system control module, and identifying tag readers configured to read identifying tags. The identifying tag readers scan delivery information to provide secure and authorized delivery of carriers and their contents. The identifying tag readers and system control together provide an efficient and secure method and system of tracking carriers and carrier contents throughout the pneumatic tube system.